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Unplayable 2: The Oirats in MMU

In times of yore, I wrote an AAR about the Oirat Horde. It was the tale of how the mighty Oirats rolled across China, creating a brave new empire that was fated to stand off against Russia in a true battle of the titans. At that point, it ended because the computer it was on wound up in storage.

But enough people in the old thread mentioned that they enjoyed the AAR that I figured that they might be interested in a rematch. This time, I've upgraded to MMU 1.26. This is actually my first game played using this patch, so it should be interesting.

"Sunset Invasion isn't ASB - it's just Prawnstar playing CK2" Athalcor"If EU3 had exiled prawn-like aliens he'd be the first one to do a WC with them..." aldriq"You were prawn under a conquering stAAR!" Arakhor

I'll certainly follow.
It seems to me the pic quality went downhill after the forum makeover, or is it only my silly impression? Anyway as a MM player I know what 'overwhelmed administration' is. Sympathies.

There are four major challenges when playing the Oirats: administration, stability, expansion and technology. The administrative problems speak for themselves – the Oirats start out large, with a large number of worthless non-core provinces, and are tribal. As for expansion, to the west, the Manchu capital of Haixi is a requirement for uniting the hordes. To the south, the enormous and densely populated Ming Empire beckons. The various nomadic and tribal penalties combine with the typical problems of administrative inefficiency to make stability a major problem throughout the game

This AAR will pass fairly briefly over the combat, since I discussed it in detail in the previous AAR. I will merely note that the Oirats have an enormous military advantage at the start of the game, which, however, will eventually dissipate as their nomadic leader modifiers can no longer compensate for their technological backwardness. The problems of modernization, however, I propose to discuss in more detail, since modernization is cursorily and inaccurately dealt with in the manual and I have received PMs asking for advice.

The Oirats begin with a massive 200% tech penalty in the socioeconomic realm, in addition to 25% for their lack of innovation and 50% for their closed markets. That's a total of eleven ten-year adjustment periods, so, assuming no overlap, a fully modernized Oirats will have spent about a third of the game in social turmoil.

The socioeconomic penalties are the most severe in the game. While they come with major advantages – a massive +2 to leader fire and leader shock – they also preclude the construction of a navy, on top of their obvious technological drawbacks. And they are the hardest to get rid of, taking six stages instead of the normal five. Moreover, in order to overcome the first two stages, it is necessary to lower the nomadic level of the capital and its surroundings. This the Oirats initially lack the resources to do.

Once this barrier is crossed, however, it becomes relatively easy to modernize socioeconomically. All but the last two socioeconomic stages can be overcome with an administrative form of government, which the Oirats will gain automatically when they form the Qing.

The closed-economy penalties are relatively easy to remove, since controlling two CoTs counts as +2 to the free market slider. Having a maritime capital with an anchorage is also +2 to the naval slider.

The innovative penalties are hardest, and are very misleadingly documented in the manual. This is an area where I will be learning as I go along.

As it currently stands, the Qing formation decision is supposed to move the capital to Shuntian. However. this is currently impossible, as the event to move the Ming capital from Shuntian does not fire unless the Qing have already formed.

Should I mod the event to fire? If so, how? This is how the event currently looks:

#ming court flees south (human version - applies if MNG or QNG is player controlled)
country_event = {

Come join us in Werewolf! We don't bite, much!
Wins: Survived to the end in Werewolf CXII: Refugees as a Cursed Villager
Losses: Overwhelmed by wolves as a Plotter Villager in Werewolf-CXX-Shipwrecked
Total Wins/Losses: 1/1